The major draw of these apartments is that they cost much less than homes being sold by private developers. Many buyers hope to flip around the apartments to make a quick buck.

Successful applicants for the homes are selected randomly by a computer, so the housing plan is often referred to as a DDA lottery.

“It’s just a matter of buying a lottery ticket,” says Deepak Tayal, 31-year-old resident of Gurgaon, who plans to apply for a DDA home this year. Mr. Tayal, who is currently living in a rented apartment, says he has been looking to buy a home in Delhi to live in, but found the two to three-bedroom apartments sold by private developers to be very expensive.

On Monday morning, DDA’s website crashed under the weight of around 500,000 hits as people tried to access the application form, according to Ms. Dhar.

Who can apply? Any citizen of India who personally or whose dependent family members don’t own a home in Delhi, can apply for a home under this plan.

Where are these homes? Unlike 2010 when many of the homeswere in south Delhi areas such as Vasant Kunj, this time around, the homes for sale are mainly in far- flung areas.

More than 20,000 homes that will be newly constructed by the DDA will be one-bedroom apartments in north-west Delhi’s Rohini and Narela neighborhoods, Mukherjee Nagar in north Delhi, and Dwarka, near the airport. These apartments will cover an area between 32 to 48.5 square meters, and will cost around 1.5 million to 2.1 million rupees ($25,000 to $36,000), according to the DDA brochure.

Around 500 homes are being offered to buyers in what DDA calls a middle-income group. These are slightly larger homes, between 76 to 127 sq. meters in area, and costing between 4.2 million and 7 million rupees. They are available only in three areas of the capital: Mukherjee Nagar, Narela and Kalyan Vihar.

DDA is also offering to resell around 800 existing homes, a handful of which are in the south Delhi neighborhood of Kalkaji.

What about red tape? Applicants will need to submit the DDA application form, and a demand draft or banker’s check with a registration fee of 100,000 rupees, at one of the dozens of bank branches listed by the DDA on its form.

And the deadline? Individuals have until Oct. 10 to apply and the draw for winners is expected between Oct. 25 and 31, according to Ms. Dhar. Many typically wait until the last day to apply because once an application is submitted the registration fee is blocked until the draw is announced. The fee is returned to applicants who don’t get a home.

Though the keys to the homes are given out shortly after payment, home ownership will not be granted for five years, according to DDA. This is to prevent speculators from applying for these homes and selling them on quickly for profit, says Ms. Dhar.